Pimp my cleric

[nintendoh]

Hello. I have never played a cleric before and let me tell you its a lot different then a dread necro. Anyway so the dm offered a rebuild. What i have now is an LG human cleric if heronious with the glory and war domain.

Str 16
Dex12
Con18
Int10
Wis14
Cha 8

Feats
1St improved shield bash
Human shield charge
3Rd extend spell

The rebuild starts at lvl three using the same stats. How can i make this better? I was thinking about going ordained champ and mythic exemplar later. Opinions please.

[noob]

For contact having high wisdom is still your best bet(for access to spells independent of your gear and having higher dc spells when you firestorm the opponent army).
Priests have ridiculously awesome damage spells at high level(like firestorm who deals high aoe damage to all the opponents you want to kill)
sadly they needs some levels before having good damage spells but remember that the priest is not just a buff/healer he can also summon planar allies, create undead(Yes you can do that with a good aligned priest if you do not do too many undead and that you do not do them with humans) and create walls suddenly and have some bonus great spells with the domain of trickery(time stop and PAO) and also have all the line of summon monsters which helps outside of battle if you have huge summon lists for accessing many spells(I look at you mirror mephit) basically if you play a priest even if you want to do melee there is tons of other things for which you will be great if you max wisdom(trust me 18 in that stat is a must have for priest even when fighting in contact unless you dislike dying so much you want to die more by not maxing it and putting points in con instead).(It is sad that now your sub-optimal distribution of stats can not be changed)
Well It is hard now that you have chosen those stats to have a good cleric.(can still be done by the right combination of prc I think)
Divine metamagic and persist spells are awesome take them instead of your fighting feats then try to find those sticks of extra turning attempts(once you have the right WBL).

[nintendoh]

The numbers themselves cannot be changed but you can arrange them in any order you see fit. Does anyone think i should go ordained champ at level four. I would lose out on the spontaneous healing. The other party members are a swordsage stone dragon build and a archer ranger. Both are level three

[Sagetim]

If you can rearrange your stats, I would suggest going with 14 strength, 16 con, and 18 wis, or 14 con 16 str and 18 wis. Either way, that 18 should be in wisdom because you are a cleric. Not a paladin. You need to have a certain minimum amount of wisdom to cast cleric spells (10+spell level, actually). Furthermore, wisdom not only gives you your modifier for spell dc's, it also gives you bonus spells per day for high wisdom.

So yeah...wisdom is pretty crucial to being good at being a cleric. This is because the key class feature for cleric is spells. Not their bab, not their proficiencies, not their hit die. Spells. They have a decent little d8 hit die, and their bab isn't crap, but their key class feature isn't that they can tromp around in full plate with a shield and hit things with a mace or their god's favorite weapon, it's that they can enact the will of their chosen deity through miracles called divine spells.

Turning undead is also helpful, and a potential reason to invest in charisma as a cleric (in addition to skills like diplomacy). With charisma as your dump stat, I'm going to assume that you're not worrying about being the party face or engaging in turn undead shenanigans. I'm sure someone else can make a compelling case for having high charisma and doing the turn undead thing, but I'll leave that to someone else.

Party composition wise, it looks like you are up in melee alongside the sword sage. I have to assume that you are both doing the ac tank thing. In your party, you only have one person with a good base attack bonus (the ranger, in the back, with his bow). Having lower strength and con to favor your wisdom a bit more isn't going to hurt you in being an armor class tank (because you'll still have enough strength to go around in your armor and shield). The trade off of 1 hp per level vs the benefits of 4 points more of wisdom is...a lot. For immediate purposes, that's a +2 to the dc of all your cleric spells (whatever you happen to use that has a dc on it). For long term purposes, it means that you can get 20 wisdom by level 8, and thus have 2 bonus level 1 spells per day instead of just 1.

I may not have been very clear, so I'll say it outright: You should not be expecting to be a melee power house as a low level cleric. Maybe after you have divine power available as a spell that you can cast (in which case having 14 strength instead of 16 isn't going to make much difference, while having an extra 4th level spell per day to be able to cast it more than once will). You can be effective, but you should leave damage dealing to the people with class levels that can do it well (the sword sage, and the ranger) and worry more about leveraging your high ac into making enemies waste their attacks on you instead of your allies by missing, and using buffs and healing to keep your party going and make it more effective in combat.

I'm sure there are other ways to play clerics. I'm sure someone will say that some Theoretical Optimization is the best way to do clerics. I don't really care, I'm just trying to give you some advice that will hopefully work for you in the game you are in.

As for your equipment: If you don't already have full plate, get it as soon as you can. +1 if possible. a +1 shield would be your next goal, followed by a +1 longsword (if that's not heironious' favored weapon, then use whatever that happens to be. I'm pretty sure he's longswords for favored weapons, and as a cleric of the war domain, you have proficiency with them).

After that, a periapt of wisdom will help you be better at casting. A ring of protection will help bring your ac even higher.

As a reminder: The main damage dealer in your party is probably going to be that sword sage. Don't worry about trying to keep up with his damage. The Ranger is also probably going to become a damage power house. Don't worry about keeping up with his damage either. While Cleric or Druid Zilla is a meme on the internet, it doesn't mean you have to play a cleric like that.

Edit:

Mythic Exemplar is fine in my book. It has some interesting abilities and is one of the few classes or prestige classes that gives a straight +2 to a stat without making it an inherent bonus. That's nice. I don't know if it's 2 caster levels nice, but that's up to you to decide and deal with. I wouldn't call most of the abilities for Imdastri 'great', but if that's what you want, then go for it.

Ordained Champion requires 7 ranks of knowledge religion as a prerequisite. This means you have to have at least four levels Before you can take any levels of it. In your case, that would be cleric 4. Ordained Champion also kills your caster levels by 2, which means if you took both of these prestige classes to completion, by level 20 you would never get level 9 spells. You would also end with a BAB of +15. The lack of spontaneous healing is going to be painful for your party, because neither of the other two characters seem to be very capable at restoring the hp of party members. And if you were looking to use the smite power from the prestige class, you would need a charisma score to back it up, with a preference for one that has a good positive modifier so you could get a bonus to hit and use it more than twice in a day.

If you're planning on using Ordained Champion to go melee heavy, then having high strength doesn't actually help you that much. The Smite requires charisma, the Holy Warrior is based on wisdom, most of the class abilities rely on you being able to cast or sacrifice prepared spells, which means you need enough spells that you can comfortably do that. In it's favor, it has a full bab, and if you don't want the domain abilities for your non-war domains, you can drop them for a pair of fighter bonus feats. If you want to use this prestige class to it's utmost, you would probably want to have the rest of your character levels providing full spellcasting so that you can get as many spells per day and spell levels as you can, and you would need to have a positive charisma mod to make the most out of it's 'spend a turn or rebuke attempt' abilities. As it is, with 8 charisma, you have two turn attempts in a day.

If you do go Ordained Champion, you might want the rest of your levels to be cleric. The reason being that you would end with a +16 base attack bonus and have a fourth melee attack when full attacking. And you would have 18 caster levels, enough to have 9th level spells and more than one spell slot per day in them (not counting domain slots). These prestige classes don't seem to play nice together, and I would suggest against taking both of them.

[nintendoh]

I was considering taking ordained champion until level three for the full bab and the ability to channel spells. I really like the channel harm. Did it a lot with the dread necro. I was going to take mythic exemplar until the greater gift to get the plus 4 to wisdom bringing me to twenty something. Does this change things at all. Over all i would only lose two caster levels if i did it correctly.

[Sagetim]

I was considering taking ordained champion until level three for the full bab and the ability to channel spells. I really like the channel harm. Did it a lot with the dread necro. I was going to take mythic exemplar until the greater gift to get the plus 4 to wisdom bringing me to twenty something. Does this change things at all. Over all i would only lose two caster levels if i did it correctly.

Yeah, but you don't need channel spell to hit with harm. It's a melee touch attack. And if you want to murder things with harm, you're going to want as many caster levels as you can get, and probably spell penetration and greater spell penetration to have the best chances of skipping past pesky spell resistances. And you'll want the 18 wisdom so that your will save dc on harm is competitive with monsters that you'll be hitting with it. Even with a temporary buff that gives +4 insight to wisdom, you'll want to use that to pump your wisdom as high as it can go (by starting at 18 and going up from there, instead of starting at 14 and only catching up to what it could have been). If you only had 4 mythic exemplar, the ability is only going to last for 4 rounds anyway.

And you'll still be shouldering the burden of being two levels behind on your caster level, which can be suuuuuper frustrating as a player. At the least, you're probably going to wind up delaying 4th level spells (like divine power) until level 9. Divine Power is Nice. And...you're the only full caster in your party. I've been in a party with no full casters before. It was painful. When we finally got a full caster? It was a godsend.

[nintendoh]

You make a good argument... Do the shield feats need to go. Im rather fond of my masterwork spiked heavy shield. Its thwacky!

[jiriku]

Trading cleric levels for mythic exemplar is about an even trade, or maybe a slight loss for you. Losing a caster level to get +4 Wisdom for a few rounds per day is not a good trade. I'd stick with cleric there, but no one would call you foolish for choosing to be an exemplar of Imdastri for a few levels.

Trading cleric for ordained champion is about even, or a slight gain for you. If you expect to be stuck in as a melee caster, making frequent melee attacks, channeled attack spells will be a big win for you and well worth the lost caster level. There are a LOT of channel-friendly spells in the range of 3rd - 6th level that you'll like. Even the 4th level of OC starts to look good once you already have 4th and 5th level spells in plenty -- starting a fight with, say quickened divine power + righteous might, then going to town with channeled spells like poison, bestow curse, contagion, or inflict critical wounds is pretty hardcore. Dropping quickened flame strike here and there while slugging it out in melee will also make you feel like a boss.

I'd suggest you go cleric/ordained champion and skip mythic exemplar. However, don't be in a hurry to get into the class -- the lost caster levels from OC are very front-loaded while the class features mostly serve to improve your ability to use your existing spells. That means you need to get good spells first by advancing your caster level, then pick up OC levels afterwards to get cool tricks and toys. A good 20-level progression might be cleric 7/OC 3/cleric +2/OC +2/cleric +6.

I definitely recommend taking the Practiced Spellcaster feat once you start losing caster levels -- clerics get a lot of buffs that are heavily dependent on caster level, and a high caster level also protects your buffs from being removed by dispel magic. It's well worth a feat slot to keep your caster level as high as possible.

Nice tricks with OC:
Channeled spells are never cast in the traditional sense, so you don't need to cast them defensively if in melee.
They also don't require the ability to speak, so you can channel successfully inside a silence spell. Note that you can channel silence into an attack. Or just cast it on yourself.
Hilariously, you can carry a whip and channel cure spells through your whip, extending the touch range of the cure spell to the whip's range of 15 ft. Cure spells heal additional nonlethal damage equal to the lethal damage that they heal, so the cure will erase any nonlethal damage dealt by the whip while also delivering its normal healing to your ally.

[nintendoh]

Ha the whip of love. The last two levels of oc give damage reduction and bonus to damage rolls equal to spell level sacrificed. Is that worth it ?

[jiriku]

You basically get a grab bag of various uses for your swift actions and spare spell slots. None of them is individually worth the second lost caster level, but all of them collectively are probably worth it. In particular, the War domain spells from 4th to 9th level are all good, and the ability to spontaneously cast them as swift actions is handy. You will want swift divine power in almost every combat, and a swift blade barrier or swift power word blind at the right moment can turn a fight around. But again that's only useful after you get access to those spells -- jump into OC 4 too soon and you'll lose a caster level for very little immediate benefit.

Thinking about your feats, I'm not sure you want to jack around with a shield all that much. You can do better. Consider the following:
1st: Extend Spell, Power Attack
3rd: Augment Healing
6th: take your pick
9th: Practiced Spellcaster
12th: Quicken Spell
15th: Chain Spell
18th: Persistent Spell

Your healing strategy should be out-of-combat healing via a wand of lesser vigor, a wand of lesser restoration, and a few scrolls of restoration for emergencies, supplemented by in-combat healing via close wounds (2nd level), insignia of healing (3rd level), darts of life (5th level), and heal (6th level). Healing circle (5th level) is also a good heal if you get the opportunity to cast it prior to entering combat. The Augment Healing feat will make those lower-level heals efficient. This approach places a very light load on your available actions, leaving you with more actions remaining to thump heads in melee.

2-handed weapon + Power Attack + channeled spell is great way to spend your actions in combat, especially if you make melee attacks as touch attacks (using the ice axe spell, for example). At higher levels, you can make good use of Quicken Spell and Persistent spell to get more buffs into place while saving your precious in-combat actions for melee attacks. Chain Spell will allow you to efficiently place your many buff spells on all allies, cohorts, animal companions, summoned monsters, etc.

That being said, it's not the end of the world if you decide you really like shield bashes and you want to stick with what you've got.


Edit: Something I should emphasize is that you cannot base your build around ordained champion's class features. They are shiny, and seductive, and it's easy to get lost in all the bells and whistles. However, the core of any excellent battle cleric build is going to lie in excellent clerical spellcasting and strong fundamentals. You want high-level spells, lots of them, and excellent AC, saves, and hit points. If you're going to use your spells offensively, you also need formidable save DCs, which means high Wisdom. A cleric with all these things going for him is a dead-hard badass who is tough, dangerous, and difficult to kill. You then add ordained champion levels to that solid cleric build, gaining the ability to deploy your powers with greater speed and flexibility -- but the muscle in the build is still coming from those strong, strong clerical spells.

[Sagetim]

Ha the whip of love. The last two levels of oc give damage reduction and bonus to damage rolls equal to spell level sacrificed. Is that worth it ?

No, the DR is crap and the damage bonus is meh. You can get a better damage bonus with a buff that's going to last longer than that by casting a spell, and the DR is very situational. Even if you could drop a 9th level spell on it for 10 dr, it doesn't last very long and at the level that you would Have 9th level spells to use, 10 DR is just not going to do enough to be worth a 9th level spell. Pretty sure you could mass harm with a 9th level spell, right? Or something...implosion, true rez, and other spells come to mind as being more useful than 10/chaotic dr usually is.

Now, if it was DR/- then it might be an okay class ability, but most spells are more useful than the dr burning them would provide.

As a note...quickened divine power would be an 8th level spell. If you wanted to use divine metamagic to blast it out sooner than level 15-17, you would need enough charisma to have, what, 4, 5 uses of turn undead per day? And that would be to do it once. So 16 charisma, which would mean having at least 10 charisma and a cloak of charisma +6 at high level, or a better starting cha and lesser cloak..or...etc.

If you want to be a shield guy, I won't fault you, but if you start looking at running a cleric as a caster, there are probably more useful feats you could take out there. Practiced spellcaster may not give you more spells per day, but it will at least keep your caster level on par with your character level if you go 15 cleric/5 OC.

edit: Oh, divine power IS in the war domain? I should probably have looked at the war domain spell list...

[jiriku]

As a note...quickened divine power would be an 8th level spell... edit: Oh, divine power IS in the war domain? I should probably have looked at the war domain spell list...

Yeah. It was confusing of me to call it quickened. It's not obtained via Quicken but via the OC 4 class feature.


No, the DR is crap and the damage bonus is meh. You can get a better damage bonus with a buff that's going to last longer than that by casting a spell, and the DR is very situational. Even if you could drop a 9th level spell on it for 10 dr, it doesn't last very long and at the level that you would Have 9th level spells to use, 10 DR is just not going to do enough to be worth a 9th level spell. Pretty sure you could mass harm with a 9th level spell, right? Or something...implosion, true rez, and other spells come to mind as being more useful than 10/chaotic dr usually is.

Now, if it was DR/- then it might be an okay class ability, but most spells are more useful than the dr burning them would provide.

All true. The sole thing in its favor is that it's a swift action. This lets you get going quickly. In a fight that lasts 3 rounds, you can drop swift divine power and attack+channel, burn a spell for a damage bonus and attack+channel, then burn a spell for DR and attack+channel. If you didn't have ordained champion levels, it would be cast divine power as a standard action, cast bull's strength as a standard action, cast righteous might as a standard action, and oh hey look at that the fight's over and I haven't even made an attack yet.

[Sagetim]

Divine Power gives a +6 enhancement bonus to strength, which dun stack with bull's strength's +4 enhancement bonus to strength so...why cast both? >.>

[nintendoh]

I should prolly tell you he is named leroy jenkins and i play him as such.

[jiriku]

Divine Power gives a +6 enhancement bonus to strength, which dun stack with bull's strength's +4 enhancement bonus to strength so...why cast both? >.>

I was picking spell names more or less at random in the interest of posting quickly. My apologies, that was a bad example. The point is that in the short example combat, it's unacceptable to spend three rounds just buffing and not contributing, but just leaping into the fight with no buffs degrades the cleric to a featless fighter with a crappy attack bonus and strength. The ordained champion features allow a character to get into the fight right away and buff as he goes, using his standard action to make attacks and using his move action, swift action, and available spell slots to produce useful effects. OC is a class that's all about exploiting action economy and enabling flexible responses to fluidly changing combat situations.

[Sagetim]

I was picking spell names more or less at random in the interest of posting quickly. My apologies, that was a bad example. The point is that in the short example combat, it's unacceptable to spend three rounds just buffing and not contributing, but just leaping into the fight with no buffs degrades the cleric to a featless fighter with a crappy attack bonus and strength. The ordained champion features allow a character to get into the fight right away and buff as he goes, using his standard action to make attacks and using his move action, swift action, and available spell slots to produce useful effects. OC is a class that's all about exploiting action economy and enabling flexible responses to fluidly changing combat situations.

yeah...back in the old days you didn't have this problem so much. You could cast bull's strength and it would last for hours. Divine Favor would stick around too, if you cast it a little before you anticipated combat. But then 3.5 happened, and the durations fell. And buffing has only fallen from there, in the new editions. I miss the days of casting some buffs and remaining effective for a full work day's worth of time.

[noob]

If you want that back use divine metamagic and night sticks and persist spell and ocular spell and now you can persist divine might on the fighter of the group and stuff of this kind.

[jiriku]

yeah...back in the old days you didn't have this problem so much. You could cast bull's strength and it would last for hours. Divine Favor would stick around too, if you cast it a little before you anticipated combat. But then 3.5 happened, and the durations fell. And buffing has only fallen from there, in the new editions. I miss the days of casting some buffs and remaining effective for a full work day's worth of time.

Ah, the good old days. I miss 1st edition, when fireball really filled 33,000 cubic feat, and lightning bolt would bounce off a wall and hit you in the face. :smallbiggrin:


If you want that back use divine metamagic and night sticks and persist spell and ocular spell and now you can persist divine might on the fighter of the group and stuff of this kind.

Very true. Some people call this TO, but at my table we just call it good clean fun. :smallbiggrin: But the OP said this is his first cleric. I suspect that CoDzilla might be a little too much sauce for the dish. And besides, he's third level; most persist-type cleric builds don't really start to gel until 6th level at the earliest (and more commonly 9th or even 12th level).

[Sagetim]

Ah, the good old days. I miss 1st edition, when fireball really filled 33,000 cubic feat, and lightning bolt would bounce off a wall and hit you in the face. :smallbiggrin:



Very true. Some people call this TO, but at my table we just call it good clean fun. :smallbiggrin: But the OP said this is his first cleric. I suspect that CoDzilla might be a little too much sauce for the dish. And besides, he's third level; most persist-type cleric builds don't really start to gel until 6th level at the earliest (and more commonly 9th or even 12th level).

He would also need massive charisma that is currently his dump stat.

[noob]

Or to use items giving bonus turn undead but they costs a lot and he will not have that before some levels.

[nintendoh]

I was attempting for a buff and beat down build... That tanks.

[jiriku]

There's a lot of ways to do buff, tank, and beat down with cleric. I think Ordained Champion will do well by you as long as you don't take too much of it too soon. The important thing, especially since this is your first cleric, is to experiment with different spells in different combinations. If it doesn't work well you can always prepare different spells the next day. If you don't master the cleric spell list, you won't do well even if you copy the "perfect build" off the internet. However, once you learn which spells are good and bad and which spells suit your style, you'll be able to build strong clerics many different ways.

Here are a few of my favorites which I'll recommend to your attention. These are mostly higher-level spells, since you've already had a chance to play with the 1st and 2nd level spells.

For buffing the party:
mass shield of faith
mass resist energy
recitation
righteous wrath of the faithful
mass conviction
mass spell resistance
mass death ward
heroes' feast
greater legion's magic weapon

for buffing yourself into a beatstick:
divine power
divine favor
righteous might
ice axe

for in-combat healing:
mass aid
close wounds*
insignia of healing
darts of life*
panacea
heal
mass heal
magic convalescence*
fortunate fate
renewal pact
revivify
delay death
(*assuming you take the Augment Healing feat, or Imbued Healing with the Healing domain)

for information-gathering:
divination
commune
find the path
discern location
locate object
greater scrying

for personal self-defense:
single-target version of the "mass" spells above (you can use them on yourself several levels before you can cast them party-wide)
greater resistance
superior resistance
greater blindsight
magic vestment